Battle of Camden

The Battle of Camden (16 August 1780) was a major battle of the American Revolutionary War that was fought near Camden, South Carolina. The battle was a British victory, and the American army led by Horatio Gates was utterly defeated, with Gates galloping off by himself and abandoning his men. The battle served to strengthen Charles Cornwallis' hold on the Carolinas.

On 16 April 1780, George Washington dispatched Horatio Gates and an army of 4,000 Maryland and Delaware Continental Army troops south to recapture the vital port city of Charleston, which had fallen to the British earlier that year. The Americans were reinforced by North Carolina and Virginia militiamen as they moved south, but Gates refused the help of guerrillas or cavalrymen, instead planning on forming defensive works 5.5 miles north of the British garrison at Camden, which was commanded by Francis Rawdon Hastings. Cornwallis brought his 2,100-strong British army north to confront the Americans, and the two armies clashed at 2:00 AM on 16 August before breaking off and waiting for daytime to fight.

The next morning, before the fighting resumed, Gates deployed the unseasoned militia on his left center, and the veteran Delaware and Maryland troops under the Bavarian general Johann de Kalb to the right. The British impetuously advanced, throwing the militia into a panic; the great majority of the militia fled without firing a shot. Officers and men joined in the flight, and 2,500 men - four-fifths of the American army - ran away. Only a militia regiment and De Kalb's Maryland and Delaware regiments stayed on the field, and they drove the British back in a valiant counterattack. However, Cornwallis then turned his entire force upon them, and the outnumbered Americans continued the fight first with bayonets, and then with their bare hands. De Kalb led his division from the front, and he stood and fought before being wounded multiple times and being bayonetted to death. De Kalb's men now fled with the rest of the army, chased by Banastre Tarleton's cavalry, and Tarleton hounded the rebels for 22 miles before halting his exhausted men.

General Gates himself rode past his militiamen, going out of the state and further. Gates never fought another battle after deserting his entire army, covering 180 miles in three-and-a-half days. In three months, America had lost two armies and suffered two of its worst defeats, and the Americans were forced to rely on partisan warfare.